Martin Gardner

American writer (1914–2010) on recreational mathematics and scientific skepticism, whose long-running Scientific American "Mathematical Games" column shaped generations of mathematical enthusiasts.

Gardner wrote more than a hundred books spanning mathematics, magic, philosophy, and literary criticism (he was a leading authority on Lewis Carroll, author of The Annotated Alice). His column popularized polyhedra, tilings, flexagons, and the geometry of higher dimensions, and he was a founder of the modern scientific-skepticism movement.

Role in Fuller's orbit

Gardner is a contemporary popularizer of the very geometry — polyhedra, symmetry, higher dimensions — that underlies Fuller's synergetics, bringing it to a broad public through play and puzzle. As a skeptic he also modeled the critical scrutiny that Fuller's grander claims invited; his work sits alongside the corpus's polytope and geometry materials rather than deriving from Fuller directly.

See Also

• Regular Polytopes — the higher-dimensional geometry Gardner popularized
• Robert Anton Wilson — contemporary in the skeptic/rationalist counterculture

Sources

• Martin Gardner (source reference) — Zotero People collection (Wikipedia entry)
• Martin Gardner Home Site (source reference) — Zotero People collection (website)